2021 Tapestry Magazine
2020-21 TAPESTRY Magazine: A New Outlook
In keeping with the 2020 theme of adaptation, the Tapestry team has decided a temporary change of course is in order.
While we had planned to release two print issues for the first time in the 2020-21 academic year, we’ve recast our vision to more appropriately fit our circumstances, and we’re excited to share our plans with you.
The 2020-21 issue of Tapestry will be released in a piecemeal fashion, with new articles appearing every week in a virtual medium. Content will rotate among three compelling categories.
Snapshot: These brief, biweekly pieces will highlight faculty, students, and alumni who are chartering new territory within the COVID-19 pandemic. These stories of innovation are close-up pictures of Edwards College scholars and professionals doing great work under extraordinary circumstances.
Feature: Complex, ongoing stories that require more in-depth exploration will appear once a month. A feature story may present a new initiative, a new program, or a unique partnership between an Edwards College department and a community collaborator, or it may trace a decades-long career of a notable alum.
A Closer Look: This monthly multimedia piece will offer an alternative, behind-the-scenes perspective on an Edwards College story. An interview, a video montage, a podcast, or some form of visual narrative will bring the viewer a richer understanding of a person or event within the college.
We hope you come with us on Tapestry’s evolutionary journey, and we look forward to your feedback. Reach us at 843-349-2507.
SPRING 2021
MAY 3, 2021
“I have a place to be now. That’s how I feel about the tribe. It’s a place that people who have not been accepted in the full society of this country can be accepted.”
Chief Harold “Buster” Hatcher’s sentiment describes his feelings upon discovering the Waccamaw tribe in the 1980s, yet it also expresses the fundamental purpose of the group and its snowballing movement to become federally recognized. Through an exhibit at the Horry County Museum in Conway, a group of Coastal Carolina University students and faculty members have thrown the weight of knowledge, research, physical aesthetics, and public awareness behind the effort. Click here to read more.
FEATURE | APRIL 21, 2021
In the very best academic lessons, students arrive at the juncture where theory meets practice. In a recent CCU television journalism course, a collaborative project yielded just that – and even better, the learning extended beyond students to include community members, the instructor, and a national organization. Click here to read more.
FEATURE | APRIL 6, 2021
The key to becoming a successful poet? Turns out it’s not ideas, vocabulary, or some kind of magical transcendence. It’s persistence, plain and simple – persistence and tough skin. In fact, two kinds of persistence are crucial in the publication process: a creative version that compels the writer to continually revise and polish the poem; and a grittier version that motivates the writer to submit over and over again until the poem catches an editor’s eye. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | MARCH 24, 2021
Many of us might remember the last thing we did before the COVID pandemic sent us home from school and work in March 2020 for a period that would extend nearly a year.
For Coastal Carolina University alum Elizabeth “E.P.” Vermont ‘20, her final memory is an interview to discuss her then-upcoming Critical Languages Scholarship, a highly competitive award that would take her to Azerbaijan to study the language in Summer 2020.
Then, of course, the whole world changed. Click here to read more.
FEATURE | MARCH 23, 2021
For Coastal Carolina University alum Alexis Widdifield ’15, the path to graduate school started with just a hunch. She’d been out of college for five years and found herself still thinking about those archaeology classes she took as an undergrad, so she decided to contact her former mentor Carolyn Dillian, chair/professor in the Department of Anthropology and Geography. Click here to read more.
Coastal Carolina University and Horry County Schools educators recently took to their Zoom screens in a collaborative partnership to build connections between the area’s K-12 and university-level instruction. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | MARCH 15, 2021
Chanticleers and their fans across the nation remember the exciting weekend in December 2020 when ESPN’s College GameDay rolled onto the Coastal Carolina University campus to broadcast its live national pregame show leading up to the Top 20 matchup between CCU and Brigham Young University. However, only a handful are aware of the CCU senior who was stationed just to the left of the ESPN cameras. Joseph “Reid” Hamilton served that day as a runner, assisting, interacting, and observing up close the full production of a major television operation. For Hamilton, the real action happened not on the field, but on the set, and he was right in the middle of it. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | MARCH 1, 2021
Demonstrating a key indicator of academic excellence, Coastal Carolina University’s award-winning Waccamaw literary journal has earned yet another national nod for a recently published poem. Click to read more.
FEATURES | FEBRUARY 15, 2021
During a time when nothing seems to go as planned, it’s nice to know that some formulas still work: a talented student combined with supportive faculty and outstanding opportunities is able to realize the global mission and goals of a charitable organization. Coastal Carolina University graduate Maddy Scholar ’18 is exactly that student, and Rotary International is the generous and appreciative patron. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | FEBRUARY 1, 2021
CCU’s Department of Anthropology and Geography has recently gained a new space that not only transforms the learning process for students, but also offers a facility for research, interdisciplinary projects, and community building.
The anthropology and geography lab, located in Prince 201, is a teaching space for classes ranging from Cultural Resource Management; to Primates, People and Prehistory; to Physical Geography; to Forests and People. Originally designed as an archaeology lab in the 1980s, the space was used for a variety of other purposes over the years until Carolyn Dillian, chair of the Department of Anthropology and Geography, made a case for a return to its original purpose. Click here to read more.
FALL 2020
SNAPSHOT | DECEMBER 7, 2020
The Company
You Keep
Grey Eckert (’20) created a graphic design capstone project in her senior year that earned her membership to a world-renowned professional organization. Perhaps even more importantly, though, she developed ties with a faculty member that has impacted her life and will far outlast her years at CCU. Eckert is the first CCU student to earn membership in the International Society of Typographic Designers (ISTD), a prestigious group that includes some of the most accomplished typographers and graphic designers in the world. Her project, titled “(No) Vacancy,” involved the creation of a new type style and a neon sign reflective of that style, complete with the related research, background justification, and documentation of her process. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | NOVEMBER 20, 2020
Dream job? Check.
Connor Uptegrove (’19) is “over the moon.” Despite cataclysmic odds, he has landed a full-time gig in his chosen field. At a nonprofit organization. In a pandemic. Who does that?
A Chanticleer with talent, background experience, and determination. These qualities cinched Uptegrove’s new position as communications coordinator at the Children’s Center for the Visually Impaired in Kansas City, Mo., starting Dec. 1, 2020. Click here to read more.
A CLOSER LOOK | NOVEMEBER 2, 2020
When theatres across the country are shuttered and production ceased, what happens to aspiring actors?
We took a look at how faculty members are continuing their rigorous training instruction amidst restrictions in physical proximity and spacing. Monica Bell, professor of acting in the Department of Theatre, has applied creativity and ingenuity to instruction in her Movement I class. Click here to read more.
FEATURE | OCTOBER 26, 2020
Things to Do
As the COVID pandemic has left millions of people with time on their hands, many have turned to poetry for solace – and found Dan Albergotti’s words.
While COVID-19 causes continuous pain and uncertainty across the globe, it also allows – no, requires – individuals worldwide to sit, think, and reflect. It provides time and space for people to consider their lives on a different scale. It offers a nurturing environment for those inclined to use their idle moments for connection and creation.
Within this context, numerous individuals spread across continents chose a poem as the focus of their endeavors. Individually, and without knowledge of the others, each selected Dan Albergotti’s “Things to Do in the Belly of the Whale” as a canvas upon which to pour their creative output. One artist in Iran, one in Australia, one in New York, one in Pennsylvania, and one in Massachusetts found the poem online and created a visual representation of it as a response to the COVID crisis. This global, organic contagion of poetic sentiment demonstrates how the power of art, combined with the power of the internet, can make connections, spread beauty, and offer healing among people even in the midst of a historic crisis. Click here to read more.
SNAPSHOT | OCTOBER 15, 2020
International research, COVID-style
CCU’s Eliza Glaze combines technology and ingenuity to conduct collaborative research on pre-modern medical texts.
As life during COVID continues its slow march, innovative scholars are finding creative methods for conducting research that would otherwise have required international travel. In keeping with other inventions sprung out of necessity, these new research techniques may in fact eclipse traditional methods even in a post-COVID world.
Eliza Glaze, professor in Coastal Carolina University’s Department of History, is one such resourceful scholar who, in forwarding her study of the intellectual and social histories of the Middle Ages, participated in virtual collaborative research on pre-modern medical history in Summer 2020. Click here to read more.
Explore Tapestry Magazines
Explore our current and past issues of Tapestry Magazine.
Tapestry Spring 2020
Take a look into all the incredible things that have happened in Edwards over the Fall Semester.
Tapestry 2019
From Jeff Rich's photography on waterways to the accomplishments of our Art Alumni, this Tapestry is a fresh new look at the Edwards College.
